


Endnotes

by sideraclara (angeloscastiel)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, Death Eaters, Harry Potter Next Generation, Multi, Third Wizarding War, neo-death eaters technically, next-next gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 14:38:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloscastiel/pseuds/sideraclara
Summary: the war may have ended decades ago, but the ideology never died.the story of an endnote in the history of the second wizarding war.final instalment of the Fred Weasley Memorial Scholarship 'verse





	Endnotes

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the final novel of the Fred Weasley Memorial Scholarship verse! this story is a next-next gen and probably can't stand alone, just because so many of the characters & their stories will be unfamiliar if you haven't read the rest of the verse - especially Pending Further Investigation. enjoy!

The last days of summer were the calm before the storm at Llodewick Institute. On nights like this – technically autumn already but still balmy and light, the sun slowly, reluctantly slipping below the horizon – it was more true than ever. It was the Sunday before term started, and the few gaggles of first-years who had ventured onto campus to explore during the day were long gone, beckoned back to halls of residence dotted on the periphery by the promise of dinner.

On the cusp of her fourth year at Llodewick, Aroha Potter had learned to savour the quiet buzz of campus during summer. In twelve years, the world’s only magical university had swelled to an enrolment number of seven and a half thousand, and on weekdays in term time the campus was busier than Diagon Alley. In summer, though, it was populated only by the lecturers and other researchers – like her, technically. She had graduated from Llodewick with a degree in Arts and Humanities at the end of the last academic year, and though she had officially been a _postgraduate researcher_ for two months already, it didn’t quite seem real. Suddenly she had an office of her own – well, she had an officemate, a Media and Communications undergrad named Oliver Fairbank, who was working on a summer internship – and ran into lecturers in the staff kitchenette on their floor, and had just finalised her contract as a teaching assistant for two of the undergrad history courses.

The streetlights flickered into life above as she walked home, the twilight gloom settling at the edges of the cobbled road. Llodewick Village lay an easy ten-minute amble from the edge of the university campus, having sprung up practically overnight – at least by magical village standards – following the founding of the Institute. It was home to the majority of second and third year undergrads – the first years tended to live in the halls – and a number of staff; It had sprung up as demand for housing close to campus increased, and since its establishment it had been responsible for creating an estimated forty new jobs in construction. A new subdivision had just been marked out, and the village centre, which included a small supermarket, an owl post office, a Floo Exchange, and a fish and chip shop, was been growing rapidly. There were restrictions, of course – the Ministry, after lobbying from the New Quarter Business Collective, had banned the development of any business in the Llodewick area that would directly compete with Diagon Alley. Restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, and major retail shops were therefore nowhere to be found, but the supermarket, fish and chip shop, and Floo Exchange was all most students wanted from their village anyway.

Llodewick Village had a population – admittedly somewhat seasonal, as it became a virtual ghost town once exams ended in June –  of three thousand, making it one of the largest magical settlements in Britain, second only to Hogsmeade. Both were dwarfed, of course, by the magical communities in the major cities – London alone boasted a magical population of twelve thousand – but Llodewick was unsurpassed in the rapidity of its growth and its diverse, cosmopolitan population. There were murmurings about its future if the rumoured universities of Germany and the United States were to go ahead, but for now, Llodewick was the Athens of the contemporary West. Aroha had called it home since her first year – having taken a gap year after Hogwarts, she had arrived at Llodewick a worldly, independent nineteen-year-old and had no desire to live with fresh-out-of-school first years in the halls – and she loved it for the same reasons most people hated it. It looked like any tiny, peaceful English village, but its youthful population made it as loud and sleepless as any city – especially during Orientation week, when returning students were getting to know new flatmates over kegs and casks, and reuniting with friends they hadn’t seen all summer. It was the Sunday before term started so the parties had quietened down, but Aroha passed a large gathering of students in the village square. Someone’s flat had a barbecue, and there seemed to be an impromptu picnic taking place.

“Aroha!” a familiar voice yelled, and she crossed the street to find Nadir Malfoy – best friend, cousin, flatmate – outside the fish and chip shop.

“Hey,” she said. “Are we grabbing a feed?”

“I know I am. Wasn’t sure when you’d be coming home. I saw Rawiri and his flatmates over in the square, I’m gonna go back and join them – you keen?”

She shrugged. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Rawiri, as it transpired, was already drunk. “Fam bam!” he bellowed, spotting Aroha and Nadir in the distance. “Fam bam with _food!”_

“None of it is for you,” Aroha told him, deftly dodging his outstretched hands.

“Aw,” Rawiri said disappointedly, before turning to the cluster of five twenty-year-old boys behind him. “Hey, Goon Squad – meet my fam bam.”

“Goon Squad?” Aroha asked.

“Yeah,” Rawiri said cheerfully. “They’re all Aussies. See, we named ourselves it because when we moved in, we all drank a goon – ”

“I guessed.”

“Psst,” one of the drunk Australians hissed at Rawiri. “Your sister’s _really hot.”_

“Fuck off,” Aroha and Rawiri said in unison, and the kid sank back into the grass with his hands raised in surrender.

“Good bunch,” Aroha said conversationally.

“Yeah,” Rawiri said. “Yeah nah, they’re good cunts.”

Aroha and Rawiri had embraced their New Zealand heritage in different ways – Aroha had spent her gap year in Christchurch with her whanau, picking up some Te Reo, learning the history of her iwi, and now taking on a research project funded by the New Zealand Ministry looking at how to decolonise New Zealand’s magical education. Rawiri lived with Australians.

Not that it was a _competition –_ although when siblings were involved, it always was – but Aroha was probably connecting with her ancestry in a more meaningful way. Probably.

They lingered with Rawiri and his flatmates long enough to finish their fish and chips – it wasn’t a hugely enlightening conversation, with Rawiri nine standards deep – but, as he assured Aroha on four separate occasions, his first class wasn’t until two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and he was gonna have, quote, “real fuckin’ good attendance this year, y’know? Imma – I’ma _stop skipping classes._ Tell Mum.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Aroha said graciously, and left them to it.

Their flat was one of the smallest in the village, which Aroha saw as an accomplishment – with Nadir working and Aroha’s research fully funded, they could finally afford to only split the rent and bills two ways. They had lived together – with other flatmates – the whole way through their degrees, and while they were thrilled to leave huge, crowded flatting situations behind, neither had wanted to move out of Llodewick. Nadir had toyed with the idea of the New Quarter, but it was somewhat out of their price range – while it may have been affordable at their age in their parents’ day, it was now almost exclusively the domain of yuppies in their late twenties and early thirties. Llodewick, partly because it was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and partly because it was rowdy _all the time_ , was one of the cheapest places to live in wizarding Britain – only young adults wanted to live there, and young adults couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. It was a good system.

“So,” Aroha said conversationally once they had arrived home and put the kettle on, “How’s work going? Feels like I haven’t seen you in _days._ ”

“It’s because you haven’t,” Nadir replied. “You’ve been _living_ on campus. And it’s eh,” he continued, addressing her question with a vague hand wiggle. “I still don’t feel like it’s right for me, you know? But I _want_ it to be. I think I’m trying too hard.”

“Probably,” Aroha agreed, passing him a cuppa and flinging her feet on the coffee table. “What does your dad think?”

“Which one?”

“Scorpius.”

Nadir sighed heavily. “He’s half the problem. Like, he’s so _proud_ of me and I know he wants me to stay on and he’s even talked about me _taking over_ the Hopping Pot one day, and I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m not sure about it, you know? Because it _should_ be perfect, I want to help people, and I want to stay connected to my roots, but I’m…” he shrugged. “Not sure.”

“Is this the bit where I tell you that he loves you no matter what and he’s already proud of you and your career isn’t gonna change that, or do you know that already?”

Nadir grinned. “I know it already, but I appreciate the support.”

“Good,” Aroha said. “You could always go behind his back and talk to Albus, he’s probably less invested in you staying at the Hopping Pot.”

“You have known my dads long enough to know that they’re _telepathically connected._ I can’t say anything to one without the other hearing it.”

“True,” she conceded. “What’s on the agenda tomorrow?”

“A _budget meeting,”_ Nadir replied. “First thing in the morning. The financial reports were done last week for the entire Foundation, and we’ve got a _little_ more funding in Syria, but the Aleppo clinic wants to expand and there are people in _our_ Ministry who are kicking up a fuss about us using Healing students as unpaid interns, even though it’s a _course requirement_ in the School of Healing to do unpaid placement in third year.”

“Yikes,” Aroha offered. “So they’re gonna try and make you pay them?”

“They had better not, because our budget can’t stretch to that and the Ministry knows – we’re a _charity,_ for fuck’s sake, and Healing students are _lining_ up to do placements with us rather than at Mungo’s. Anyway. What about you? When’s your first tutorial?”

“Not till next week, but I get paid to attend Lucy’s lectures and she’s teaching at ten tomorrow. You know, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’re _invested_ in the Hopping Pot’s budget issues.”

“It’s hard not to be _invested,_ it’s my job, and the more funding we get the more lives we can save. It’s a direct correlation. And I can never forget that I’m only here, _alive_ , because of the Hopping Pot.”

“They don’t talk about that at work, do they?”

“No,” Nadir said, “But they all know. I’m either the boss’s son or a refugee success story, and I don’t know which stereotype I hate more.”

Aroha hugged her knees and regarded him thoughtfully. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s why you can’t settle into the Hopping Pot. It’s like – when you’re there you’re only the sum of what’s happened to you.”

“You,” Nadir began after a lengthy pause, “Are too fucking wise.”

“Nah. I’m just learning how to overthink everything, like a true academic.”

“It suits you.”

“Aw,” she said, unsure how else to respond. “Hopefully my supervisor agrees.”

“Who is your supervisor?”

“Piper Morgan? You probably never had her, she teaches US and Canadian history.”

“What does that have to do with what you’re doing?”

Aroha shrugged. “She went to a Muggle university in Canada, and she’s done some work on First Nations stuff so she’s got the postcolonial and indigenous studies background. She doesn’t know shit about New Zealand though, so I’ve got another supervisor from Ngai Tahu who I just owl every now and then.”

“How long does an owl take to get to New Zealand?”

“Too fucking long. I’d Floo call, but timezones.”

“I know that pain.” Nadir glanced at the clock. “Speaking of time, I need to go to bed.”

“Same,” Aroha agreed. “Shotgun the bathroom first.”

“Fuck you.”


End file.
